Across the Pond

So far, it hasn't been a great millennium for British theater. Having spent most of the past fifty years riding high on the post-war victory of the Labor Party, which made it a priority for the first time in England's history to establish a large pool of public funds specifically directed at the theater, the entire dramatic community seems to still be in a state of shock at the now 20-year old cuts that Margaret Thatcher's administration made on the Labor Party's bounty. And though funding has been on the rise again since the Blairs moved to Downing Street, there remains an obvious sense of trepidation in the decisions of London's producers and directors. For a nation that could celebrate the new millennium with anything as audacious as the theme park-cum-history museum that is the Millennium Dome, you might think they could at least produce an dramatic innovator on the order of Peter Brook for the turn of the century. But rather than face the years ahead straight-on, the powers that be on the West End have chosen to turn their gaze every way but forward.

In fact, it was a challenge just to find an English show in London for the first summer season of the millennium. England's former colonists, the Americans and the Irish, seem to be filling all the West End theaters. Two separate Tennessee Williams plays, Orpheus Descending and Baby Doll, made their homes in London for the summer, as did David Mamet's Speed the Plow, a three-hander trying to capitalize on that other London-based, three-actor, world-wide phenomenon, Art (an import from Paris, mind you). Even the self-proclaimed (actually, government-proclaimed) flagship of the English theatrical world, the Royal National Theater, found itself bowing its hat to the Americans with a new production of Arthur Miller's All My Son and a stage of adaptation of Singin' in the Rain. Even the Old Vic Theater opened its doors to non-British writers and put up Frank McGuiness' new play, Dolly West's Kitchen, a sentimental (and surprisingly Neil Simon-esque) family-based comedy that deals with the issue of Irish neutrality in World War II.

That's not to say British plays are nowhere to be found in London. Copenhagen, Michael Frayne's tale of friendship, betrayal and nuclear physics is still running strong on the West End. Thanks to Michael Blakemore's powerful direction - who would have thought three actors, three chairs, and page-long monologues about quantum mechanics could be so captivating? - the show looks to be a mainstay of the London theater scene. But there's hardly enough new activity to warrant excitement. The big news is that Joe Penhall finally broke the National Theater's string of poorly received new plays with his new work Blue/Orange, a gripping (if somewhat clinical) treatment of the politics of mental institutions. But Blue/Orange is in pitifully small company when it comes to innovative new works. The word around Andrew Lloyd Weber's upcoming The Beautiful Game is that it will be less than ground-breaking. And the two new plays from the pen of millionaire writer-director Alan Ayckbourn, House and Garden (two interconnected pieces performed by the same cast simultaneously on two different stages at the National Theater) are all concept and no content. In fact, the best piece of original, recent English writing in London today is probably Passion Play by Peter Nichols. Nichols' new work has been unofficially banned from the West End because of a nasty dispute with the National Theater some years ago, but this new revival of one of his early works proves (for those who've forgotten) that he's one of England's most skilled dramatists. In a season with such little English skill in evidence, it seems about time to let bygones be bygones.

Fortunately for the English, a dearth of new talent just means a greater opportunity to do more Shakespeare. And despite the slight air of defeat in the idea of facing the new millennium with a string of 400 year old plays, it's hard to complain when there are so many worthy productions of the Bard. Leading the pack is the National Theater's new production of Hamlet, starring the incomparable Simon Russell Beale. Bringing a sensitivity and compassion to the title role beyond that found in almost all other stagings in memory, Beale has clearly solidified his position as one of the greatest actors of his generation. A little further down the Thames, Mark Rylance also spent the summer tackling the melancholy Dane at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Though reaction to his weak and weepy interpretation of Hamlet was poor, there was a general admiration of the quality of the production in general. Thanks to Rylance, London theater elites seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief at the realization that the fledgling Globe will not simply become an Elizabethan Disneyland attraction but will be the site of serious, star-studded productions. - David Kornhaber

ALONG THE CHARLES